Why Am I Not Blogging More IMSI/Design Stuff?

Someone on the IMSI/Design/TurboCAD forum asked me why I wasn’t blogging more company info. Great question. Here was my response:

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Pat–

Sorry for delayed response.

The trial version should be ready this week (please check the TurboBLOG — http://TurboTECH.wordpress.com — for announcement). I’ve always been embarrassed that no matter how much science you put into it, the process of finally getting a product out-the-door always ends up behaving more like art. Thanks for your patience.

Note, for what it’s worth, we really are on a pretty intense development schedule… seven major releases, a few updates, a few localizations, and a bunch of website work… all in the span of a few months.

Re: my blog: I’ve labored over this one for quite a while.

Officially, we try to communicate through the forums, newsletters, email announcements, and through the press and opinion makers.

We’ve also created the official company blog, TurboBLOG (referenced and URL above).

My blog, on the other hand, is really based on my hobby… instead of birds, I watch stocks (smile). I’ve been watching stocks for as long as I can remember. My dad and I would pour over the stock pages and talk about stocks that were moving (up or down) and why. Obviously, my hobby focuses on online advertising these days, an industry that I think will stay on its current trajectory through the end of the decade.

I’ve labored over whether to add IMSI/Design stuff to my blog and decided not to do this at this time for a number of reasons:

First, we already have a corporate blog and I think a single contact point with customers is always more effective. And, to be frank, for a corporate blog to be effective, it has to be consistent. Clearly I’m not the consistent blogger in the family (so to speak).

Next, as I’ve been upfront and honest about from the very beginning, I’m not a CAD expert. It would not be genuine of me to give anyone the impression that I am an expert by commenting on either the on-goings or the interworkings of the CAD industry.

At least not for now.

Finally, while I’m not a CAD expert, I think I’m capable with big picture software directions. I’d like to believe we’re seeing things in the industry that others have missed.

As such, I’m a bit reluctant to talk about the stuff we’re working on. Partially because we’re not going to talk the talk, rather, we’re going to walk the walk (or however that expression goes.) And partially because I believe our strategic direction is a competitive advantage for us… don’t really want to tip our hand at this early stage.

Suffice it to say, we’ve validated our strategic direction with some of the smartest people in the CAD industry… their enthusiasm, as you can imagine, has us pretty fired up.

So while we may be more quiet than we should be, please make no mistake, we *are* working on a ton of really exciting things… our partnership with Google re: TurboSketch Studio — the *first* company in North America to do such a thing with Google — is just the beginning.

Overall, what I hope is obvious: I didn’t come to IMSI/Design for "business as usual."

We appreciate everyone’s patience… we think you’ll like what you’ll see from us in the future.